


Slave to Fate, Chance, Kings, and Desperate Men

by fannishliss



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Other, Post-Season/Series 02, Reconciliation, but there are canon-levels of death, past Matt/Elektra, the end game is getting Matt and Foggy back together, this is not a death story, written as Gen but Slash at heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 06:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9165664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: Matt and Foggy aren't speaking.  What will it take to bring them back together?





	1. Possum Ran Over My Grave

 

Foggy nodded at the bartender, and she poured them another round. The bartender’s name was Madison, not Josie, and she was pouring the Macallan, not the Eel. Foggy leaned against the well-polished bar, no worries about sullying the sleeves of his jacket with sticky schmutz of unknown origin. Well-heeled professionals clustered here and there in the dim light, chatting low and trying to put their everyday concerns to bed for the night.

Karen smiled unhappily at her whisky. She looked good, Foggy thought, comfortable in the practical garb and walking shoes of an investigative reporter fast making a name for herself.

“It doesn’t look good,” she finally said, lifting her gaze to meet Foggy’s.

Foggy frowned. He didn’t want to talk about it.

“Come on, it’s nothing but chatter,” he began, but the burning in his gut wasn’t from the eighteen year single malt his new job afforded him.

Karen’s blue eyes burned into his, her fine brows creased with concern.  “Chatter’s not nothing, not when there’s this much of it.”

Foggy didn’t remember so many explosions in the Hell’s Kitchen of his youth.  Now they seemed to take place like clockwork, gutting warehouses, shattering homes, demolishing cars that sat unattended for just a little too long.

The Devil had been spotted at the docks. Maybe there had been some underworld shipment.  Maybe  a firefight.  Almost certainly there had been spinning kicks and fisticuffs.  But then, the explosion.  And after that, nothing out of Matt for two, almost three weeks now.

Karen had made the rounds the morning after, but no one fitting Matt’s description had turned up, which at the time had been a relief.  Matt tended to hole up to lick his wounds.  After three days of phone messages unanswered, a vacant apartment, and Claire reporting that Matt hadn't called her either, Karen called Foggy.

At first Foggy was angry.  The anger was always just below the surface nowadays.  It seethed, a mixture of worry, resentment, guilt, and justifiable righteous indignation.  Foggy told himself that righteousness filled out the lion’s share of the pie chart, and busied his brain with images of righteous lions feasting on rich, meaty pies, as opposed to the stale crust and meagre meringue of the humble pie an associate like Foggy (on the fast track to partner) did not deign to dip his fork into.

In reality, Foggy was hungry, and no amount of pie, whatever the variety, could hope to satisfy his craving. Foggy had spent ten years relying on a good right hand man, and now that right hand had been lopped off. Foggy had walked the halls of Columbia, the corridors of Landman and Zack, the streets of Hell’s Kitchen with Matt’s hand resting lightly on his arm, Matt’s rich chuckle filling his ears, Matt’s clever thoughts lined up in step with his own. Now there was a bitter, cold, echoing void that his new job at HCB could not hope to sate, despite its ample offerings of prestige, exhaustion, and billable hours.

“Foggy, he might not be coming back,” Karen said, trying to soften the steel in her tone.

“That’s not my problem anymore,” Foggy said, determined not to be moved.

“You’re still his next of kin,” Karen said, color rising. Her pale complexion broadcast every emotion like a neon sign.

“Elektra left him a fortune,” Foggy sighed.  “The last time I talked to Claire, she told me that Matt told her his bills are set to autopay. I don’t even know what you want me to take care of.”

Karen stared at him, eyes bright with emotion.  “So you’re saying, Foggy Nelson doesn’t care that Matt Murdock might be dead.”

“I didn’t say that,” Foggy said, lowering his head.  He threw back his Macallan, a shameful waste.  In the old days, at least he could have been shredding the label off Matt’s imported beer.  “You shouldn’t say that.”

“That he might be dead or that you don’t care?” Karen demanded.

“I care, okay?” Foggy said.  “He was my best friend for years, Karen.  Years! He threw that away, not me.  He cut me out of his life. How was I supposed to react? He lied to me, sabotaged our firm, walked one way and told me to walk the other.  What is it you want me to do?”

Karen took a deep breath and let it out.  She finished her drink, stood up, and lay her hand on Foggy’s shoulder.

“I want you to think about this: if Matt is dead, do you want this to be how it ended, with the two of you not speaking?"

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Foggy said.

“It does matter,” Karen challenged.

“If he’s dead,”  Foggy said, suppressing a shudder, “there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

“But if he isn’t, don’t you think this is kind of a wake up call?”

Foggy shook his head. “Matt can take care of himself.”

“What if he can’t?” Karen asked.

“I don’t know,” Foggy said.  Matt was strong, but he was vulnerable.  He was smart and resourceful, but he wasn’t superhuman.  His senses told him so much about the world, but they couldn’t tell him what fate held in store.

“I want him to be okay,” Karen said.  “I want him to turn up so I can rip him a new one for worrying me like this.  But most of all, I want the two of you to get past this stupid estrangement. You’re his best friend, Foggy.  You need each other.”

“He doesn’t need me, Karen,” Foggy said, and that right there was the hole, the pit, the void in his gut.  “He proved that when we shuttered Nelson and Murdock.”

Karen shook her head.  “Maybe you didn’t work out as law partners, but you can’t let that kill a friendship like the two of you have.”

The hole inside Foggy felt as deep and wide as a grave. “I thought we’d grow old side by side,” he admitted, sadly.

“Maybe you still can,” Karen said.  “If you get the chance, don’t let it go.”

Foggy threw a hundred on the bar and saw Karen into her ride.  He walked, the Kitchen streets old and familiar to him, his regular human eyes and ears set to a regular level of vigilance.

Something rattled as he passed an alleyway.

Despite himself he had to look.

Cautiously, he moved a few steps away from the street into the littered zone between the buildings.

The biggest rat he’d ever seen emerged from under a pile of old crates, huge and gray-white like a possum. It looked at him, streetlight reflecting eerily in its eyes.  It stared at Foggy calmly like it was staring across his grave, into his very soul, then turned with a swish of its long, scaly tail and paced further down the alley, disappearing into the darkness.

Foggy was left staring into the empty night, no idea why he was still standing there.

 


	2. Jantelagen

Matt came to, stifled his startle, and started trying to figure out where he was.  
  
The air was moist and cool.  It smelled a little musty.  He could hear distant dripping, but not in the room where he was.  Basement? Sub-basement? Some place underground.  
  
He kept still.  At least he wasn’t tied to a chair.  He was on a cot, under two blankets.  His left wrist and right ankle were secured with only a slight allowance for movement.  
  
“You’re awake,” a voice said— a voice Matt should have been able to recognize, but horribly hollowed and utterly changed.  
  
Terror jolted through Matt with a surge of adrenaline, and he unintentionally jerked against the bonds.  
  
“No one’s here to hurt you,” the voice said calmly.  
  
“Who — who are you?”  Matt gasped.  His heart was jack hammering — he had to calm himself.  He was better than this!  
  
The voice hesitated.  He could hear long hair shimmering slightly as the speaker shook her head.  (Her long, heavy hair, thick and smooth as silk — no, he refused to consider the possibility!)  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” the voice answered.  “What matters is that you are awake.  You’ve been in a coma for weeks.  You started coming out of it a few days ago.  That’s why you’re bound, so you wouldn’t … wander off.”  
  
The accent, the manner of speaking — it was so familiar, yet … there was no heartbeat.  No warmth.  No scent of her.  Matt’s gall rose— the emptiness of the person speaking to him was physically nauseating.  He couldn’t bear it to be…  
  
“Elektra?” he whispered.  
  
After a long silence, that in a better life might have been the space of a long indrawn breath and a sigh of resignation — “Not any more.”  
  
“What are you? How did this happen? What — what can I — how can I help— “  
  
Matt hurled the inchoate questions out into the darkness.  Elektra had always moved silently, swift as a shadow, just as they had both been taught by the same harsh master — but now, her silence was that of the tomb.  That deathly void was so much worse than when the Hand had fought him — concentrating on fighting, on hearing the slightest indications of their movements, had grounded him — but this, this nothing — this had been Elektra, a woman he had loved, a woman he had held in his arms, a strong and lithe body that had moved against his — now breathless, cold, and literally heartless.  
  
“There’s nothing you can do, Matthew,” she said.  “It’s already been done.  All we can do now is try and take the advantage of what they’ve made of who I was — their precious Black Sky.”  
  
“Did Stick — did he do this?” Matt said, anger surging up through his sorrow and horror.  She had been dead.  She had fought a good fight, dying redeemed.  He had mourned — was still mourning — every nocturnal clash was another blow dealt, at least partly, in remembrance of her.  
  
And now, here she was.  A shell.  A revenant.  A travesty of the most vibrant woman he’d ever known.  
  
“You always thought you were better than us.  Better than me.  Now, it’s most certainly true.”  
  
“No,” Matt whispered, but it was pointless to deny it.  He lived a life of violence, just as she had, just as they had both been trained, but he had lines he refused to cross.  Those lines made him think he was better than she was.  He couldn’t deny it.  But now, the thought only filled him with gut-wrenching shame.  If he had willingly joined her fight, stepped in earlier — could he have saved her, or at least helped her avoid this fate, so, so much worse than death?  
  
“I’m sorry, Matthew.  This is what I was always meant to become — a weapon.  But the Hand doesn’t control me.”  
  
“What about Stick?” Matt asked.  
  
“Our teacher always believed in me, even when he was sure I would be lost,” she said softly.  “But I will not be used by him against the Hand, any more than I would allow them to use me.”  
  
“I’ll stay with you, this time,” Matt said.  “I swear it.  I’ll fight, alongside you.”  
  
“No,” Elektra said.  
  
Pain tore through Matt, fresh grief, another new hell of losing her.  
  
“Please,” he said.  
  
“No,” she said.  “You belong to life, and I no longer do.  I have tended you, Matthew, and nursed you back to life— a land that is foreign to me now.  For you to stay with me would be abomination.  Go, in peace — return to your City and to your friends, and remember the love I denied so long.”  
  
“I love you,” Matt cried.  
  
“You loved me,” she said. “What I am now, nothing human should ever love.”  
  
“That’s not true — that can’t be true,” he cried out.  
  
She did not answer, and he realized that at some point, unnoticed, she had undone the bonds.  He was free.  
  
“Elektra!” he screamed.  The sound bounced around the room, indicating no other body besides his own.  An open door.  A corridor beyond.  A way out.  
  
She was gone, and he would go. He would go on. Again. He would go on without her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jantelagen is partially about how an individual should be subordinated to the group. 
> 
> The concept is from a 1933 Danish novel, A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks (En flyktning krysser sitt spor) by Aksel Sandemose. The Law of Jante is a set of rules common to many small communities where no one is anonymous.


	3. Kummerspeck

Days passed, weeks, and the Devil didn’t show. Pickpockets and muggers swarmed like rats to the Kitchen, playing now that Matt was away.

It was trivial and stupid and it made Foggy mad. Matt was gone, and the world’s only response was a slight rise in petty crime.

Foggy went to work every day. He handled the cases Hogarth gave him, and he was damn good at it. His billable hours looked great to the firm, his win rate was high, he was in line for a hefty end-of-year bonus and an excellent review. Hogarth smiled at him, her cold little smile, when they passed in the hall or on the elevator. Hogarth didn’t give those smiles out lightly. Foggy had the rare combination that made for a very lucrative career in defense— an excellent memory for precedent, a mind that saw easily around corners, and a genuine desire to defend both the innocent and the stupid.

He couldn’t defend Matt though, not against the accusations of his own sense of right and wrong. And so, he fretted.

He found himself wandering to places he and Matt had gone together. The Thai place near their old office. The ice cream parlor Matt loved to be taken to for his birthday. The pizza joint that delivered the super supreme on movie nights. The coffee shop where they bought a reprieve from Karen’s bitter brew.

Foggy ordered the noodles Matt loved, the thick ones in peppery sauce with plenty of seafood. He’d never questioned a blind man’s skill with chop sticks. Foggy had never questioned anything about Matt. Matt was his own personal miracle. Only, he’d never bothered to share the whole story with Foggy. Foggy washed the noodles down with Thai tea, thick with sweet condensed milk, and finished it off with mango sticky rice, a treat that had sent Matt swooning every time the mangos were perfectly ripe.

Foggy ordered pizza and watched Top Gun. The third time the pizza guy arrived while “Danger Zone” was playing in the background of Foggy’s swank apartment, he made some kind of snide remark about Foggy’s crush on Tom Cruise and Foggy almost punched him. No one cries their way through Top Gun, but maybe he wiped his eyes a few times. It was only because he’d always liked “Take My Breath Away,” and he certainly put the pizza away on his own, no problem.

Foggy had managed to stay away from the ice cream parlor, mostly, but empty pint cartons of Chubby Hubby and Cherry Garcia could be spotted in his trash with increasing regularity.

He never went to Josie’s. Never. He couldn’t bear the thought of it.

Matt had been gone for nearly a month, when Foggy went to Cafe Grind for a mocha. He was looking over the cookies of the day, the double chocolate looked great as always, but the gingerbread was fat and glittering with sugar crystals. And of course, the butterscotch blondies…

The doorbell jingled, and someone came in, tapping a cane. The rhythmic sound was like a heartbeat in Foggy’s ears. He froze. He couldn’t look. The cookie case was riveting.

“Foggy?” Matt said. He voice was rusty, like he hadn’t spoken in weeks.

Black swam across Foggy’s vision, and he knew he wasn’t going to handle this well.

“Hey Matt,” he said mildly, “you want a cookie?”

“Uh,” Matt said. “Yes, please.”

Always such good manners.

Foggy paid for two coffees and one of each kind of cookie.

“Long time no see,” Foggy said, and despite himself, his voice wavered, a tear trickling out of his left eye. Maybe Matt wouldn’t smell it over the salted caramel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kummerspeck is a German word that literally means "grief bacon." It refers to emotional overeating.


	4. Sang-froid

Matt kept his cool.

Foggy was there. He was right there, contemplating the cookies, like he had a hundred times before.

Matt hadn’t gone looking. He was planning to call Foggy, soon as he had a new phone. He just wanted to get a good cup of coffee and a sandwich, and think over what to do. A place like this, with so many great memories of Foggy, would help his resolve. Losing Elektra had shaken him, but the way she’d come back had shaken him more.

He had nearly died in that explosion — not so much the fire, but the blast, and nearly drowning in the river, had taken his body past its limits. Matt wasn’t sure what Elektra and Stick had done — he didn’t think he had actually died — but he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t trust them, either of them, even though he would have given anything to save Elektra from such a terrible fate.

“You’re alive,” Foggy was saying, his voice shaking. They had a table, two coffees, and a big bag of cookies.

“Apparently,” Matt replied.

Foggy’s heart was pounding and his face must’ve been bright red. Matt could practically feel the heat of his blush all the way across the table. He could smell Foggy’s angry sweat.

“Were you ever going to return Karen’s calls?” Foggy demanded.

“Sorry, my phone got blown up,” Matt retorted. He tried to take hold of himself. Losing his temper yet again couldn’t do them any good— even if there was no possible way he could make things worse.

“Uh, I’m glad I bumped into you,” Matt tried again.

Foggy sounded awful. His breathing was shallow and ragged, and his foot was jumping under the table.

“Bumped into me, yeah,” Foggy muttered. His teeth were clenched.

“I didn’t just want to barge in on you,” Matt said. “I wanted to see you. But I don’t have a phone yet.”

“Where have you been?” Foggy said.

“I was hurt. I was out a long time I guess. I’m not sure. I just came back yesterday.”

“Came back from where?” Foggy said. His voice was so angry and sad.

“If I said, from the dead, it would probably sound like a joke,” Matt said. He was trying to sound casual, but he didn’t know how well that was working.

“Back from the dead?” Foggy hissed. “Matt? for real?”

“Look,” Matt said, lowering his voice. “I got blown up. I fell in the river. I woke up. I came back.”

“Something’s missing from that story, Matt,” Foggy said.

“Elektra,” Matt mouthed.

“I thought she was dead,” Foggy whispered.

“She is,” Matt said. He felt his face harden, still horrified by the thing Elektra had become.

“I don’t get it,” Foggy said. “And I. I don’t know if I can do this. Whisper furiously back and forth with you over coffee.”

“I didn’t mean…” Matt said. “I wanted to call…”

“God damn it,” Foggy said, but the heat had gone out of him. “Okay. Your place is closer, but if you’ve been dead for a month, your fridge is probably a disaster. Come to mine.”

“Are you off work today? It’s only three o clock,” Matt said.

“Lunch,” Foggy said shortly. “I usually pull twelve hours at HCB. I’ll call in for the rest of the day.”

Matt nodded. Landman and Zack had broken them in to the crazy hours.

The walk back to Foggy’s was uncomfortable. Matt’s apartment was on the edge of the gentrification but Foggy’s new place was smack in the middle of it. There was a doorman and everything.

“Kent, this is Matt,” Foggy said, introducing him to the doorman.

“Good afternoon, sir. Do you need any help with anything?” the doorman asked.

“No, thanks. Good to meet you, Kent,” Matt said. Foggy collected his mail from Irene in reception, and led Matt to the elevator. Foggy lived on the sixth floor — not the penthouse yet.

Foggy’s new place sounded empty to Matt. The old place had been cluttered and cozy and Matt had known every square inch. Nothing smelled the same except Foggy’s laundry and the smells of the takeaway he’d brought in. Matt detected a hint of Marci’s perfume, and almost certainly a faint trace of Karen.

“How’s the view?” Matt asked with a smirk.

“Great,” Foggy said with false cheer. “I can see Jersey from here.”

Silence fell like a body off a rooftop.

“I almost died,” Matt said. “Maybe I did die and somehow they brought me back. Elektra and Stick. And. Elektra. She’s. Um. Like the Hand. Do you remember…. I told you about the Hand?”

“Ninjas?” Foggy said, wearily.

“Not just ninjas,” Matt said. “They have some kind of sorcery. They brought her back. Foggy, they dug her up and brought her back and it’s just so awful…”

“Matt,” Foggy sighed. “How many times do you want me to pick up the pieces of you that Elektra scatters when she goes?”

“It’s not her fault this time,” Matt said. “She saved me. But I couldn’t return the favor.”

“I’m sorry,” Foggy said.

“No,” Matt said. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I’m the one. I thought. I thought it was better, cutting ties. Stop holding you back. Look at this place. You’re doing great.”

“It’s okay,” Foggy said, not very enthusiastically.

“Foggy, I was wrong, okay?” Matt said. He never had a middle ground to stand on. The Murdock boys ran hot and cold— either cool, cold as ice, or their blood was on fire. Matt was burning up with his need to hold Foggy, to throw an arm over his shoulder like they always used to do, to drink and laugh and dream alongside him, without the Devil between them.

“I need you. I need you, Fog. I can’t do this. I can’t just pretend. I need you!” Matt admitted, both hands in fists.

“Matty,” Foggy said. “I need you too. I’m so sorry.”

Foggy was the one who broke, like always; he was the bigger man and could let Matt keep his ragged cool. He threw his arms around Matt and held him close.

Matt was gaunt, a haggard thing of muscle and bone. Foggy was big and warm and soft and he smelled like home. His heavy heart beat like thunder against Matt’s body and in Matt’s ears. The soft strands of his long, lank hair fell like grace across Matt’s cheek. It wasn’t as long as it had been once, but longer than Matt thought Hogarth would like. Foggy’s clothes were clean and his angry sweat burned Matt’s nose.

“Hippie,” Matt murmured, trying not to cry, holding on to Foggy for dear life.

“You love it,” Foggy said, and he wasn’t even trying not to cry.

“I do,” Matt said, and he wanted to say it a thousand, thousand times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! please leave me a comment -- this is my first Daredevil story, after spending several months devouring these delicious avocados! Thank you to the Daredevil fandom-- here is my small contribution. I hope I'll be able to write a few more things here soon. :)

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written to prompts for LJ Idol. 
> 
> The story title is a line from the poem "Death be not proud" by John Donne. 
> 
> The title for chapter one is from a song by Jesse Dayton, which includes a reference to a song by George Jones called He stopped loving her today.


End file.
